How to Properly Deal with Your Emotions (From Someone Who Went to Therapy for Ten Years)

I admit, emotion regulation is hard.

For almost two decades, I struggled with intense anxiety and fear, not to mention anger, jealousy, and shame. I tried coping mechanisms that gave me short-term relief, but the feelings only came back stronger later. It took me years of therapy and reading to learn how to properly deal with them.

This is what I learned about emotion regulation, both in terms of emotions in general and various negative/uncomfortable emotions in specific.

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Important: I am not a therapist. I do not have the licence nor the education to treat cases of chronic illness, mental or emotional. What I do have, however, are emotion regulation strategies learned through therapy, that helped me (and can help you) handle the emotions that distract or plague you throughout your day.

How to Handle Your Emotions, Generally Speaking.

In general, uncomfortable emotions operate under certain similar rules.

When dealing with them, here is what you should not do:

• Overwhelm: Allowing your emotions control you. Letting them overpower your mind and body or decide how you live your life.
• Suppression: Trying to control your emotions. Forcing them down, pushing them aside, distracting yourself from them, or toughening up.

You need to confront your emotions. Although it is true that you should avoid being violent when you are angry (overwhelm) or making passive-aggressive remarks when you are jealous (suppression), there are ways to experience and process your emotions in a safe and natural way. Your feelings are there to be felt, after all.

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Instead, here is what you should do, broadly speaking:

• Step 1: Identify the emotion, and acknowledge its presence
• Step 2: Listen to what it is trying to tell you about your current situation
• Step 3: Consider your reaction and action options. Allow yourself to experience whatever automatic physiological reactions your emotion carries (ex. crying, blushing), but maintain control over your behavior. Make sure that your (re)actions are unharmful for everyone involved.
• Step 4: Allow the emotion to be present in your body and mind, but direct your focus toward your current task (ex. studying, hanging out). By doing this, you teach your body/mind that the feeling is welcome and undangerous, and that you have control over your current situation. The feeling may come and go safely, and you are not at its mercy.
• Step 5: Communicate to others what you need or want in the situation, based on what your emotion is telling you. Be open, honest, and patient.

On a general basis, this is how I have successfully dealt with my more difficult emotions. By giving my feelings the room and time they need, whilst also maintaining focus on whatever it is that I am doing, they no longer hold power over me, and I no longer seek to overpower them. Instead, I consider their demands (that is, the needs and wants that they want me to fulfill), and I react accordingly.

Therefore, my rule of thumb is: Control your actions, not your reactions.

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How to Handle Your Emotions, Specifically Speaking.

It might be wise to recognize and approach emotions more specifically too.

Emotions differ in content and character. Different emotions communicate different things. Though they may be approached in the same general way, they might, sometimes, warrant a special kind of response from you.

Here are how you can understand and handle various emotions.

Fear and Anxiety

The most uncomfortable emotions are often negative and defensive.

In this case, fear and anxiety refer to the acute feelings experienced in a scary or threatening situation. Your body is responding to a perceived or potential danger in its surroundings, whether real or irrational. You might feel yourself tensing or sweating, and your heart might start beating faster.

For 18 years, I struggled with constant fear and anxiety. The feeling was incapacitating and almost all-consuming. After several trials of exposure therapy, I was finally freed from the claws of my worries.

In response to irrational fear or anxiety, you may respond like this:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the fact that you are scared or worried
• Step 2: Seek to identify whatever it is that is frightening/worrying you
• Step 3: Allow yourself to feel the physiological effects of your anxiety (ex. crying, shaking, sweating), whilst remaining calm in your manner
• Step 4: Direct your focus toward the task at hand. (Your anxiety is not intuition. It is an unreliable alarm. Giving it your full attention will only make it worse over time. It is by focusing on the things that matter that your mind and body learn to look away from your irrational fears.)
• Step 5: Communicate to someone about your fears and worries

You can listen to what your anxiety and fear are telling you about someone or something without necessarily acting on the irrational instincts that can harm your health in the long term.

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Anger

For many people, anger feels like a dangerous emotion to have.

But anger is not the same as hostility or aggression, even though it might boil your blood and activate a reactionary wish to harm someone who has hurt you. Anger signals that someone has overstepped your boundaries or desires. On its own, it is entirely undangerous, because as long as you have control over your actions and words, you cannot actually hurt anyone by just allowing the feeling to course through you.

I had such a short temper myself during my adolescence. I got easily frustrated, annoyed, or angry, and before I learned to harness these feelings, I used to pick fights and arguments left and right. These days, even when I do get angry, the blood that used to boil hot in my veins now burns weaker than ever.

To achieve this too, you may respond like this to anger:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the fact that you are angry or irritated
• Step 2: Seek to identify whatever it is that is angering/annoying you
• Step 3: Allow yourself to feel the physiological effects of your anger (ex. boiling blood), without doing something that can actually hurt someone
• Step 4: Step away from the situation that angers you, and do something that can calm your want to yell or attack. Take a couple of deep breaths.
• Step 5: Return to the situation with a more centered mind and body. Calmly talk to someone about how and why they have hurt you.

You can do as your anger wants and protect your needs, desires, and boundaries, without resorting to old-fashioned aggression or passive-aggression.

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Sadness

It is a difficult thing, feeling blue when things are meant to be bright.

Sadness is a way of grieving a loss or curing a hurt. Sadness signals that your needs and wants need attention. You might need social support and care from someone close to you, or you might want time and space to tend to your wound on your own.

Throughout my own life, sadness has come in many shades. Sometimes I have been melancholy or lonely, other times despairing and aching. Some sadness is bottomless, and other times it is shallow and quiet — but prior to this year, it has never been easy or even beautiful as I now see it.

In response to sadness in any shade, you may respond like this:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the fact that you are sad
• Step 2: Seek to identify whatever it is that is making you feel sad
• Step 3: Allow yourself to feel the physiological effects of your sadness (ex. crying), without trying to belittle or ridicule your vulnerable state
• Step 4: Focus on the task currently at hand. If needed, take a few deep breaths and do something that makes you feel nurtured and cared for.
• Step 5: Have an honest conversation with someone close to you about your current situation. Be accepting of some (or all) of their support.

You can look into your sadness without also falling into despair.

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Jealousy

It is often said that jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it is entirely natural.

In the instances that you feel jealous, you are perceiving that someone is taking something valuable away from you, and your instinct is to protect it. But these jealous interpretations of reality are usually flawed. They are very valid, because they emphasize your connection to certain valuables in your life, but they are also misconstrued, because they tend to be quite wrong.

When I was younger, I was very sensitive to the potential removal of something I held dear. I was afraid of losing my friends, becoming only second best in English class, or being suddenly overlooked by my crush. Eventually, I stopped trying to twist my way around these fears, and I started approaching these sources of jealousy in unharmful ways to accomplish my innermost values: healthy relationships, academic acknowledgement, and personal development.

Likewise, you may respond like this to jealousy:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the fact that you are jealous of someone
• Step 2: Seek to identify whatever it is that is making you jealous
• Step 3: Allow yourself to feel the physiological effects of your jealousy (ex. rising heartrate, distress), without seeking to eliminate your threat
• Step 4: Consider what you might do to work toward the values that your jealousy is making clear. Do not manipulate your way to your end goal.
• Step 5: Talk with the people that your jealousy concerns. Have an open conversation about how you can work together to reduce future friction.

You can acknowledge what your jealousy is trying to tell you without acting on the unfair and immature terms of your jealous inner voice.

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Shame

It is not a shameful thing to feel ashamed.

Shame arises in situations that (retroactively or currently) reflect an inner flaw of yours. This might lead to embarrassment and a strong wish to undo the damage you might have caused. Uncomfortable as the feeling is, shame shows that you care, and it offers you a chance to grow: either by (1) fixing your behavior for future situations, in the case that it was actually harmful, or (2) learning to accept the more unconventional sides of yourself, in the case that your action was completely harmless.

Contrary to many people, shame is among the easiest emotions for me to handle. Having grown attached to my own, unique way of living life, I find that actions and situations that others might deem “awkward”, have little negative impact on my mood. Of course, I always feel bad when I have done something worth regretting, but most often, this is easily solved.

You can learn to respond to shame the same way by doing this:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the fact that you feel ashamed of yourself
• Step 2: Seek to identify whatever it is that is making you feel ashamed
• Step 3: Allow yourself to feel the physiological effects of your shame (ex. blushing), without attaching yourself to the past and ruminating about it
• Step 4: Either (1) make sure you change your behavior in the future, if the action is actually harmful, or (2) direct your focus back on the task at hand (giving your embarrassment less power to fester), if the source of shame is harmless
• Step 5: Tell the people involved in the shame-inducing situation about your feelings. Allow for them to reflect. (If you genuinely did something bad, they should let you know, and then you can proceed with Step 4.1.)

Shame does not have to signal an inherent wrongness within you, but if it does warrant some kind of change, it is not a sign of irredeemability either.

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Emotions are natural responses to situations.

They cannot be forcibly removed, nor should they dictate the course of your life. In order to handle them properly, you have to understand them, feel them, and listen to them. In order to better regulate your emotions, you have to select the right actions to your reactions.

That way, neither you nor your emotions overpower the other.

Instead, you work in harmony to create the best life that you can have.